Author Archives: Sarah Shugars

The World Goes On

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This morning I woke up to news from McKinney, Texas, where over the weekend a police officer broke up a pool party, throwing a 14-year-old girl to the ground and pointing his gun at nearby teens.

There was news out of New Jersey, where state troopers shot tear gas into a crowd outside a concert, arresting 61 people and turning ticket-bearing customers away.

From my home town of Oakland, CA, there was news that police shot and killed a man who was sleeping in a car with a handgun on the seat next to him.

And then there’s news of Kalief Browder, a young man arrested at 16 for stealing a backpack. The charges were eventually dismissed, but not before he spent three years in prison without a trial.

At the age of 22, Kalief committed suicide this weekend.

This is the world we live in.

I listened to these stories on the news this morning, interspersed with tidbits on race horses and football players. I listened to these stories of death and destruction, stories of our own criminal justice system turning against us.

And for a moment I wondered how I was supposed to get up and go to work today as if nothing had happened.

Now we all experience moments of tragedy. Through personal tragedies and national tragedies we persevere.

And there can be great power and strength in that. In soldiering on despite the torrent of tragedy, in pushing through a world which has ceased to make sense.

For many of us, that’s part of the healing process. When nothing will ever be okay again, step one is desperately pretending that everything is okay.

But this morning felt different.

These were black men and women being attacked, these were black bodies who were suffering.

The message wasn’t that we were facing a deep national tragedy, that we somehow had to get through it together and soldier on despite the gnawing despair within each one of us.

The message was that it was someone else’s problem, that it was other communities being affected. Their world might be crumbling down, but my world went on.

I was supposed to get up and go to work because my world hadn’t changed.

The police aren’t coming for me.

My world goes on.

But my world has changed. It changes every time an innocent person is shot in our streets and every time our criminal system is about less than justice.

My world has changed.

These are our neighbors, our streets, our laws. This is fundamentally about our society, and everyone’s right to exist equally within it.

And until we each realize that, until we see it as our collective world shattering, until we accept that it is our responsibility to make our society better, until then –

The world will just go on.

As if nothing has changed.

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Compassion is the Best Defense in the Great Computer War

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There is a whole genre dedicated to the fear of computers turning against us and taking over the world. And as our capacity to build Artificial Intelligence improves, this concern seems to become more and more palpable.

A computer can win at Jeopardy. That puts us at 15 minutes til midnight on the computer war doomsday clock. Or thereabouts.

And there is, at least in theory, good reason to be concerned about domination by computers.

Computers have so much control over our lives it would be fairly simple for them to take us. Even if they don’t build huge robot armies of Terminators, they could wreak plenty of havoc through control of cars, airplanes, and missile launch systems.

But perhaps more concerning is the fundamental ways computers operate. Many computer doomsday scenarios envision computers who take their instructions too literally – destroying humanity to fulfill their command of making the world better.

Others stress the ruthless efficiency with which computers can operate – given a goal and the ability to learn, a futuristic computer could try unlimited permutations before determining how to reach its goal. A person can be defeated, but under this scenario a computer can not – it will always try again and always try better.

But what makes us think the computers – even if they were to gain sentience – would want to destroy us in the first place?

Perhaps because we know that’s what we would do.

Humanity’s history is one of dominance and destruction. It’s a history of enslavement and appropriation, of bending every one and everything to our will.

And to be fair, it’s probably that ruthlessness that has gotten us so far in this world. They say, for example, that neanderthals died out because they were too kind.

It’s a harsh world, and only the harshest survive.

But times have changed. We have dominated. We have reshaped the world in our image.

And we fear our creations will have that same drive that got us here, those same Darwinian instincts.

So perhaps it is time to let go of that harshness. To live in a world of love and respect, where all living things are valued.

If we could truly embrace such values, if we could pass such values on to those who follow –

Well, then, surely the computers would show us that same humanity.

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The Dangling Conversation

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It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the ills of the world.

For years, I worked on efforts to end genocide in Darfur. Or, perhaps more accurately, I worked to raise awareness of genocide as a real problem. A problem that, perhaps, someone ought to do something about. People were dying.

We raised money for on-the-ground and advocacy organizations. We held events with survivors of genocides from the Armenian genocide to the present. We pointed to the dark history of humanity and the shameful inaction of our forefathers.

We questioned why there was always a reason for the U.S. not to get involved, for the world not to get involved.

There’s always a reason not to act.

But the people keep dying.

I’m reminded of that song by Simon and Garfunkel:

And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said…

I long ago stopped engaging in anti-genocide work. I, like so many others, simply shake my head and heave the windy sigh.

I’ve moved on to other issues, other causes, other problems which also demand to be solved.

There are too many ills to take on them all.

And the dangling conversation remains the borders of our lives.

We each do our own work, focus on the accomplishable, perhaps, or simply tack into the wind for other causes. We each have our strategies for staying sane while we desperately try to bend the arc of the universe towards justice.

It is not easy work.

And there is always more work to do.

And there is always a reason not to act.

The best we can do, I think, is to constant question ourselves. To push to understand our own true goals an motivations.

When you throw up your hands and say, “well, what can be done?” are you genuinely too busy with other work or are you more or less comfortable with the status quo?

Do you genuinely think that nothing can change, or are you simply willing to accept things as they are?

You don’t have to announce your answer to the world, but you deserve to be honest with yourself.

There is too much work in this world, far too much, for any of us to do it alone.

No one person can do it all.

So forgive yourself for embracing some issues while being lukewarm on others, forgive yourself for preferring advocacy to direct service, or favoring one type of work for another.

Follow your strengths and your passions, but know there is always more work to be done.

And be skeptical of yourself when you find your dangling conversations, when you walk away from an issue rather than engage. There is only some much we can take on, sure, but we should push those borders back as far as possible.

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So Much Depends Upon

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In 1938 William Carlos Williams published the now-famous poem The Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

In high school classrooms across the country, students are analyzing the poem, wondering just what depends on that wheelbarrow, thinking about man’s reliance on nature or, perhaps, man’s dominance of nature. Thinking about a circle of life, a circle of dependence or, perhaps, a cycle of interdependence.

so much depends
upon

I love that line.

I imagine The Red Wheelbarrow as one man’s poem. A farmer, perhaps, thinking about the tools and nature that sustain his life. One man’s poem for one moment in time.

But we each might have our own poems.

so much depends
upon

a young
girl

stomping in the
puddles

Or perhaps…

so much depends
upon

a long red
worm

stretching through rain
water

Any moment can be miraculous. Perhaps every moment is miraculous.

Without any one moment, without one simple moment, the world is a different place. Shifted slightly. Not quite the same. Every moment matters.

so much depends
upon

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On The Grid

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While I may be wildly behind the curve, I got my first smart phone this weekend.

It’s the third cell phone I’ve ever owned, having acquired the first some 13 years ago. That gives my phones an average lifespan of 6.5 years. Not bad.

Believe it or not, I actually like to be an early adopter of technology, just not, I suppose, technology you have to pay for.

I would have gotten a smart phone years ago if it was cheaper or if it was free.

But the cost of a phone plus the long-term cost of a data plan was enough to deter me. Not paying for a smart phone was part of my retirement plan, I used to say.

But now I’m on the grid. And while it’s creepy that my phone knows where it is at all times, and while it’s creepy that Siri refuses to tell me if she’s self-aware or alive, it’s also pretty cool.

But before I start to live off my phone – as I inevitably will – I thought I’d record here, for posterity, some of the non-smart phone habits I’ve developed over the years. I hope to hang on to some of these, but it will certainly be interesting to look back in a couple of years.

When I’m going somewhere, I look up all the directions in advance. I write down address, bus times, turn-by-turn directions, and sometimes print maps. When I really don’t know where I’m going, I Google-street view my destination before leaving the house.

If I leave the house having neglected to do any of the above steps, I just figure it out. This happens quite frequently, actually. I may have given a quick glance at a map or vaguely thought about how to get somewhere, but a lot of the time I’m just wandering around thinking, “Meh, this looks right?”

It’s quite the adventure.

I bring a book with me everywhere. I developed this habit as a child since my father always aimed to arrive somewhere 30 minutes early. That lead to a lot of down time. Better bring a book.

If, for some reason, I’ve neglected to bring a book with me, I am content to just sit and stare off into the distance, listen to the sound of the wind in the trees, or watch passers-by.

If I’m feeling a particular anxious need to be productive, I might make a to-do list. After all, I always carry a small note book as well.

Those quiet moments can also be a good opportunity to call my family in other time zones. It wasn’t smart, but my phone still worked as a phone, you know.

And finally, before I had a smart phone I was generally unreachable if I wasn’t at my desk. People could always call me, of course, but that’s not the medium for most of my social interactions.

It’s all email and Facebook and Twitter, it’s through social media that I am most connected with the world. And I didn’t have those things when I was out in the world.

Whether it was during my 30 minute walk to work or during an afternoon running errands around town, I had time to myself. Time alone and unbombarded by the the information all around me.

I spend such little time away from a computer that down time can be precious.

Sometimes it’s nice to not have what you need at your finger tips.

I wonder if I’ll remember that.

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Voting Rights

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In any democracy, the question of who gets to vote has important implications for a group’s power and voice within a society.

Voting has taken place within modern America since at least 1607 when the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown. At that time, six men from among the colony’s 105 settlers participated in electing Edward Wingfield as president.

While a 5.7% voting rate among colonists may sound like a dismal start to what would become our nation, those six men represented 100% of eligible voters.

In the United States’ first presidential election, held in 1788–89, there were 43,782 popular votes cast from a population of 3 million. Incidentally, “only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.”

At that time, of course, the constitution didn’t provide any guidelines on who could vote. By convention, only white male property owners over the age of 21 had the right to vote. That was the popular understanding of “the people” at the time.

Since then, our definition has expanded.

In 1870, the 15th amendment gave black men the right to vote, and in 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women to vote as well. Then, in 1971, amongst the protests of the Vietnam War, the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

So throughout our history, our understanding of who are “the people” and who should be allowed  to vote has shifted.

And each expansion of voting rights has been met by skepticism by those in power.

In Some of the Reasons Against Woman Suffrage, Francis Parkman argued  “Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which society throws about them.”

You can perhaps imagine some of Parkman’s supporting points: “everybody knows that the physical and mental constitution of woman is more delicate than in the other sex.”

In his five page pamphlet, Parkman argues over and over again that women are not fit to vote, that most do not want the vote, that giving them the vote would destroy the moral fabric of our society, that the right to vote is a “supreme device for developing the defects of women” which “demolish[s] their real power to build an ugly mockery instead.”

This history is particularly compelling, because as the definition of “the people” continues to expand, we continue to see similar arguments.

People under 18 shouldn’t vote because they aren’t capable of being informed voters. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because most young people don’t care about voting. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because it is our job to protect them and nurture them – giving them the right to vote would be like letting them vote on whether to have cake for dinner.

But such arguments have proven to be flawed.

Those are the rationalizations of a society that has gotten used to putting a segment of the population in it’s “proper” place. Changing that place may disrupt social norms, but history has shown that change to always be for the better.

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Problematic Heroes

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Heroes play an important role in our culture.

Whether they come in the form of celebrities, caregivers, or activists, heroes inspire us. They show us what a person can achieve, and they provide guidance – intentionally or not – on how a person should live.

There’s just one thing – heroes aren’t perfect.

None of us are perfect.

I tend to think of Gandhi as the quintessential problematic hero. He is widely revered and his words are often uttered as hallowed. As if we could truly build a better world if only we could internalize what it means to be the change you wish to see in the world.

But despite his near-saint status, Gandhi was not without his faults.

Speaking of Jews in World War II era German, Gandhi wrote:

And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can…The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

That’s some commitment to non-violence.

Furthermore, there is significant evidence that Gandhi was “a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac.” It is certainly well documented that he preferred to sleep “naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint.”

I could go on with other problematic elements of Gandhi’s character and beliefs, but I think I’ll stop there.

The point is – the man was far from perfect.

And I don’t mean to pick on Gandhi. I suspect that under the surface of many of our revered, we’d find imperfections and flaws. Racism, dark elements of their past, or simply habits that would trouble our refined sensibilities.

There’s a reason why Jackie Robinson was selected as the first black major league baseball player:

The first black baseball player to cross the “color line” would be subjected to intense public scrutiny…the player would have to be more than a talented athlete to succeed. He would also have to be a strong person who could agree to avoid open confrontation when subjected to hostility and insults, at least for a few years.

And there’s a reason why Rosa Parks’ predecessors weren’t successful in launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 15 year-old Claudette Colvin, the first to be arrested for not moving to the back of the bus, was “too dark skinned, poor, and young to be a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge segregation.”

Activists Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith and Jeanette Reese were similarly seen as not being the right icon for the movement.

But icons aren’t always selected by shrewd organizers, carefully crafting an effort to shift public opinion.

Sometimes these heroes just emerge.

And we should not be surprised to find them flawed.

Perhaps the Greeks were wise to see their gods as afflicted by the drama of human emotions; a hero always has his hubris.

And none of this is to say we should abandon our heroes – that we should be disappointed with their humanity and cast them aside for their flaws.

But we should see them not as a remote icons of perfection, but as whole people – struggling with their flaws just as we struggle with ours.

And then we much each decide whether we find a person’s failings forgivable – whether we can still find wisdom and insight in their words.

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Everybody Wants to Rule the World (?)

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There’s a famous adage – or maybe it’s just a Tears for Fears song – that everybody wants to rule the world.

That sounds like a reasonable declaration for a particularly desperate day – when it seems like everybody is just out for themselves, willing to push people over to get to the top.

But there’s another way to interpret this phrase.

Someone once told me a possibly apocryphal story about Ray Bradbury. The author was 18 when the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast originally aired. I am told that after hearing the reports of alien invasion, young Bradbury and his brother packed sandwiches and sat out on a nearby hill.

Because the world was ending.

And it wasn’t just that the world was ending, it was that his world was ending. I’ve never found any documentation of this story, but I’ve always remembered it, and remembered Bradbury’s argument that his own death meant the end of the world.

It wasn’t a self-centered argument, but rather a commentary on the nature of reality and autonomy.

Each person has a unique perspective – not only does each person bring their own unique experience, each person experiences life uniquely. Perhaps the color I see is not the color you see.

We have developed effective mechanisms for translating across these experiences – so you and I may agree the sky is “blue” even if we experience that blueness differently.

But fundamentally, our experiences are different. Our experiences are unique. My world is not synonymous with your world.

Given that approach, wanting to rule the world is no longer about domination of everyone’s world. It’s about domination of one’s own world.

Everybody wants to rule their world.

Everyone wants freedom and autonomy. And everyone wants the right to have a say over their own existence and experience.

Of course, sometimes our needs and desires – our worlds, if you will – come into conflict, and we require collaborative tools such as politics to mediate such conflict.

But fundamentally, I suppose, it’s true – everybody wants to rule the world. And everybody has a right to.

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Where the Streets are Reclaimed

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There was some news coming out of my hometown this weekend. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf instituted a ban on nighttime protests in response to Sunday’s #SayHerName protest.

Mayor Schaaf argued that “there have been no changes to any city policy or enactment of any new ordinances in any way to prohibit peaceful protests,” however, it seems clear that this is a novel interpretation or implementation of city laws.

After night fall, Oakland Police Officers will “block demonstrators from marching in the streets.”

This, despite the fact that “Oakland crowd control policy specifically states that OPD will facilitate marches in the street regardless of whether a permit has be obtained as long as it’s feasible to do so.”

Of course, since its implementation, there have been protests every night as citizens peacefully test the limits of the new regulations.

Now, too be fair, Mayor Schaaf is in a difficult position. She was harshly criticized at the beginning of the month for the vandalism which occurred at Oakland’s May day protest.

And I don’t imagine Oakland to be a city where keeping demonstrations peaceful is easy. Oakland has long been known for its riots – for social justice and Raider’s games alike.

Some of that reputation is overblown racism from the wealthier side of the bay – but as an Oaklander myself, I have to admit, even riots make me a little proud.

So, reasonable or not, the city government sees two possible actions: minimally impinge on protestors rights, risking significant property damage, OR minimally impinge on property-owners rights, ensuring the safety of homes and businesses but restricting the freedom of protesters.

From that point of view, I’d expect most city officials to go with the property-owners. The first responsibility of any government is to ensure the safety of its citizens and their belongings. Justice will almost always take a back seat to that.

I see similar logic coming out of Baltimore and other cities – when a portion of the population turns to looting and vandalism, best impose a curfew. Keep the law abiding citizens out of the way, and clean up the trouble makers. That’s the best solution for the folks who don’t want any trouble.

In someways, that approach is not dissimilar to the shutdown of Boston which occurred following the 2013 marathon bombing. Police were searching for a suspect, a lot was uncertain, and they asked the rest of us to stay out of the way while they got their work done. Seems reasonable.

There’s just one thing: perusing a man who set bombs off across the city – even hurling explosives at police as they fled – is not the same thing as protecting a city from itself.

These are Oaklanders out on the street protesting. These are Baltimoreans and New Yorkers, and folks from Ferguson.

Whose streets? They chant. Our streets.

These are our streets.

I’m not convinced the problem is really a zero-sum game as it’s been laid to to be. Does it really come down to a choice of restricting freedom for protestors or restricting rights of property owners? Are those really the only choices we have?

That implies that government’s role is primarily to protect the rights of the majority. That whenever conflict arises, it is the minority who must suffer. It’s James Madison’s fear of factions all over again.

Our government was designed to prevent this.

But perhaps it could do a better job. Perhaps too often the rights of the minority are subjugated to the rights of the majority.

Indeed, they are – that’s why we protest.

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Professionalization

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About a year ago I was called for jury duty.

I was nerdily excited to perform my civic duty, but I was also a little overwhelmed – it seemed somewhat absurd to think that real people could be looking to me to make real decisions about real cases.

As it turns out, they didn’t need any jurors that day, which is probably for the best – my best advice would have been to find someone with more expertise to ask for judgement.

I suspect my reaction was common, but it’s also one of the side effects of the professionalization of civic work.

In some ways this professionalization is good – after all, its generally better to have someone who knows what they’re doing in charge.

But professionalization can also be dangerous – convincing people that there is no expertise in the average citizen, that all civic duties are best left to those with specialized degrees.

There’s a certain danger to that. Surely, there is much value in professional opinions, but – communities better when all their members are involved, when everyone plays a role a society’s continued improvement.

If the work of improving communities always seems like it ought to be someone else’s job or is better left to professionals, then we risk missing out – on the real expertise of community members, and on the genuine benefits that community engagement can bring.

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